The following description of background art may include insights, discoveries, understandings or disclosures, or associations together with disclosures not known to the relevant art prior to the present invention but provided by the invention. Some such contributions of the invention may be specifically pointed out below, whereas other such contributions of the invention will be apparent from their context.
The fifth generation cellular systems (5G) aim to improve the throughput by a huge factor (even up to 1000 or more), which provides a multitude of challenges, especially considering the scarcity of spectrum at low frequency bands and the need for supporting a very diverse set of use cases. In order to reach this goal, it is important to exploit the higher frequencies such as millimeter wave frequencies in addition to the more conventional lower frequencies. To meet the demands of 5G systems, a new, globally standardized radio access technology known as New Radio (NR) has been proposed with the first specification released at the end of 2017. One proposed feature of the New Radio technology is the support for Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB), i.e., wireless backhauling using relaying nodes (RN) enabling flexible and very dense deployment of cells without the need for densifying the transport network proportionately. As deterioration of any wireless backhauling link likely has a negative effect on the service quality of multiple user equipment, it is critical to constantly monitor the signal quality in the current backhauling connections as well as candidate backhauling connections. Thus, a new type of monitoring solution is required.